Avalanche Aphrodisiac: Ep 2

A new just-for-fun satire content piece every Friday

He had found something to believe in, had unleashed it into the world and here it was, inconspicuously yet effectively spreading throughout the ecosystem like a curios fungus. Who knew he would create the future, merely by predicting it.

After I left the restaurant on Saturday night, I received a message from the woman I had been on a date with: “WTF?”

Then another: “You’re a loser.” I couldn’t really argue with that.

Before I left her with the check I ordered an Uber on my phone as she sat across from me; I sensed that she expected me to pay for the bottle of Barolo she had ordered earlier that evening, but my desire to do so, and also for her as a person, had quickly mutated into indifference, so I took a ten dollar note from my wallet and left it on the table, thanked for her the “inspiring exchange” and, feeling mildly guilty, walked out the door.

Unfazed I flicked her message back into the ether and opened the Chrome app on my phone, typing the word “bitcoin” into the search bar. I clicked on the first article I saw, dated from only a few weeks ago in November 2017, at the top of which was a quote from Satoshi Nakamoto, the illusive founder of Bitcoin. It read, “If you don’t believe it or don’t get it, I don’t have the time to try to convince you.” This person - this entity - appeared to lack the desire to convince others of Bitcoin’s potential. He had found something to believe in, had unleashed it into the world and here it was, inconspicuously yet effectively spreading throughout the ecosystem like a curious fungus. Who knew he would create the future, merely by predicting it. Nakamoto didn’t need to convince anyone of its potential, it was already plain to see. It appeared to be outpacing every single other nation-issued fiat currency on the market, and there were people - namely the mysterious Nakamoto - riding its wave into the shore of their very own private islands.

Looking out the window of the cab I could barely make out the vague reflection looking back at me in the glass; it felt like an epiphanic moment, where I was no longer looking at myself, but at my former self, fading away into the past. Looking back at the screen on my phone, I realised my battery had died and suddenly felt, then, an even bigger sense of urgency pumping through me. “You can take the next left,” I said to the driver. “It’s quicker.”

The driver, who at first didn’t respond, eventually cleared his throat and said, “Do you want to come up front and drive?”

He glared at me in the rear-view mirror. “Sorry, I was just trying to help.” I rolled down the window, subconsciously out of fear, and took in a breath of fresh air, only it was polluted, and I was starting to feel claustrophobic. The car crawled forward. “Never take advice from someone who wasn’t asked for it,” he said, this time looking at the car in front of us. There followed an interminable wait in the traffic before the Uber finally pulled away and onto the stretch home. An excruciating half hour later - and on the verge of an aneurysm - I arrived outside my apartment; time now seemed more precious than ever; at once it appeared to be speeding up and slowing down, and all I wanted to do was get inside and find a way to somehow stop it. From the street, I could see my roommate’s bedroom light on; he wouldn’t be surprised to see me arrive home early and alone, but would be surprised when I told him why.

At the kitchen table I sat in front of my laptop and waited for the Ritalin to take effect, feverishly scrolling through articles and forums with the devotion of a catholic. Bitcoin wasn’t the only player in the game; there were over a thousand other clones out there trying to compete with it, and who could blame them? People who already knew about “cryptocurrency” and spoke about it online weren’t just enthusiastic about the subject - they were evangelical. One person called bitcoin “The Currency of the Internet”. On Reddit, one user had uploaded a picture of all the US Dollar notes, from $1-$100, with a caption that read, “United States Currency, circa 2017.” For a moment, I felt the presence of my former self rising to the surface of my consciousness again, momentarily catching a glimpse of the future.

Sometime around midnight my roommate swindled into the kitchen, opened the fridge and took out a beer. “The date went well, I see.” Without taking my eyes off the screen, I said, “Couldn’t have gone better.’

I spent the next hour telling him in part about the date, but mainly about bitcoin and a type of code, or ledger, I had read about called the “blockchain”.

My roommate had his own business that he operated from his bedroom; it was like eBay for antiques. I had helped him build the website one afternoon in exchange for the Ritalin I was now in the throes of. He told me that he didn’t see the merit in an abstract concept. “People want to be able to feel the value of something in their hands,” he said, “I’m not much of a believer in speculation.” I got up from my seat for the first time since sitting down almost three hours before, the pages of the notebook next to my laptop soaked in ink. “The entire antique market is based around speculation, no?” Opening the fridge, I took out a beer, in equal parts parched and piqued. “Sure, in a way, but people who buy and sell antiques can physically see the product they’re speculating on; that speculation being that the antique they’re bidding on will increase over time, or even that it will become invaluable.” He wasn’t so much losing interest in the conversation, but was beginning to build a kind of intellectual – let’s call it rational - wall in between us. “This bitcoin business sounds like gambling. Only again you’re gambling on something you can’t even see; it’s not like betting on one team to beat another, all the while watching the event your betting on unfold in real-time, right in front of your eyes, beer in hand.” My roommate was conventionally handsome, came from a family of doctors and had enough intelligence and charm to get him through life relatively unscathed. His life, from my perspective, seemed easy and full of light-hearted leisure. He didn’t spend a great deal of time contemplating the world around him, or what was going on in it, simply because he didn’t have to. He had good looks and a certain gift that enabled him to talk to women without becoming short of breath; at the very least, he wore a mask of detachment that gave me that impression of him. I didn’t resent him for this, it was just how it was. “The stock market operates in a similar way, and people make a lot of money doing that,” I said.

“My advice would be to close your laptop, get some sleep and forget about bitcoin.” He got up and walked to his room, the sound of his flip-flops following closely behind him like a dog. “Goodnight,” he said, closing the door, but underneath the door, the light in his room remained on for a long time. Was he reconsidering? I doubted it; he was probably just contemplating his prick.

I continued my research for another few hours until the Ritalin started to ware off. With the night half-expired - and without remorse or hesitation - I drained my savings account of its contents and bought $24,000 dollars worth of cryptocurrency in one fell swoop. After all, you should never take advice from someone who wasn’t asked for it. I ran a hot bath and slipped in, and for the first time unplugged myself from a world I had existed within until that moment.